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“If we are to believe the Daily Mail” isn’t a rock-solid start to any blog. But it’s worth looking at their piece that appeared late last week, because it embodies a set of prejudices prominent in the UK energy discussion. These are old-fashioned views that would lead to a set of really bad outcomes for UK energy, and for the UK prime minister’s international climate credibility. I just hope that the Cabinet meeting reported on in the Mail reports was not, in fact, full of such prejudices.

The Mail piece was not out on its own – an almost word-for-word briefing went to the BBC about cuts to renewable energy, so some media management was going on. Like the Mail story it was sent to a political correspondent, and in fact I spoke to the author in advance of his writing the BBC story – he was trying to get to grips with what it all meant.

Political correspondents are smart people – hence their plum jobs in national media newsrooms – but they don’t know the technical background so it’s hard for them to question the wisdom of what is being done on (short) media timescales. This blog is to give them a hand. In particular if the apparent future plans outlined in the Mail, including a “major expansion of nuclear and gas, but… [renewable projects]… could be ditched”.

Let’s start with the apparent problem, and then look at these proposed solutions.

The problem from government point of view is that the Levy Control Framework, which is the pot of money to support clean energy, is over-running. On the one hand this is real; on the other hand, our policy framework tends to convert a success story – the rapidly falling cost of renewable power – into a problem: The government’s predicted prices and incentives have looked very attractive leading to higher than expected take-up, in particular with wind and solar. The absence of a rise in the gas price and the Chancellor freezing the carbon floor price means that although the cost of household energy bills doesn’t alter, the apparent cost of renewable energy on the Levy Control Framework increases.

Onshore wind has already been targeted by the new government. Wind turbine prices fell 29% between 2008 and 2013 and it is the lowest cost source of low carbon power because the bid prices in the most recent auction contract were around £80/MWh and onshore wind got far more contracts than the limited number of solar farms. Critics are keen to point out that ‘the wind doesn’t blow all the time’ so the costs of variability need to be added to that. The UK Energy Research Centre estimate those costs to be £5-8/MWh for lower penetration of wind, and so adding that the £80/MWh cost still makes the total system cost cheaper than nuclear at £92.5/MWh. How does government antipathy towards onshore wind square with the promise in the Conservative manifesto of cost-effective decarbonisation, and the briefing given to the Daily Mail that government want “to focus on only ‘backing good-value green energy’ with a promise to ‘cut emissions as cost-effectively as possible’” ? Quite simply – it doesn’t. Abandoning onshore wind means cutting carbon emissions less cost-effectively.

The initial high cost of offshore wind is not an economic barrier to its use. With plausible assumptions about cost reductions and proportion of overall costs retained in UK, an emphasis on offshore wind rather than gas would lead to macroeconomic growth in UK, even accounting for the initial increase in energy costs for consumers.

The Mail piece I mentioned at the start of this blog piece suggested that the UK government would prefer to go ahead with, seemingly, more nuclear. It is a little mysterious why the UK remains so attached to new nuclear power given its impressive degree of underperformance.

Meanwhile UK renewables, despite relatively grudging support largely because of EU targets, have almost quadrupled to approaching 20% of UK power in 2014. So if the Mail article is right about the government now wanting to deliver a major expansion of nuclear is correct, the question to ask is: Why is two years enough to apparently show a failure of renewables, whilst 10 years of non-delivery does not demonstrate the failure of nuclear?

Challenge each renewable industry sector to show a pathway to low cost.

Use innovative methods to lower costs. For example, the way Denmark manages its offshore wind resource means that headline costs are half that proposed for Hinkley Point C power station because government intervention lowers costs – of both environmental monitoring and grid connections.

IPPR (Institute of Public Policy Research) have shown how use of the government balance sheet can lower costs dramatically for capital intensive projects. A Climate Change Committee estimate is that is cost of capital is brought down by a half through lowering the cost of borrowing, the levelised costs of power production come down by about a third.

In short, the movement in favour of clamping down on “green levies” as reported would mean stifling innovative industry creating tens of thousands of jobs, in many cases just as it makes its way to cost effectiveness – punishing renewable technologies that have reduced (and continue to reduce) their costs whilst rewarding those who have achieved little.

The cost increment on bills is real, but potentially fairly short-term compared to the long term lock-in of costly contracts (nuclear) or higher carbon infrastructure (gas) whose implied rights to operate could block the kind of emissions reductions Cameron appears to want to flow from the Paris climate conference.

Clean energy is now a major industry where states are vigorously competing for markets. It is also critical for tackling climate change. It is also clear that Cameron’s credibility and influence at those talks would be dramatically reduced if his domestic clean energy sector is in a tailspin or falling apart.